Below, find a video of William Black’s speech at the 2013 Public Eye Awards in Davos, Switzerland.

Quoting George Ackerlof and Paul Romer, Black references an early warning against deregulation, and 1993 followup that “many economists still seem not to understand that a combination of financial circumstances in the 1980s made it easy to loot a financial institution with little risk of prosecution. Once this is clear, it becomes obvious that high-risk strategies that would pay off only in some states of the world were only for the timid. Why abuse the system to pursue a gamble that might pay off, when you can exploit a sure thing with little risk of prosecution?” (“Looting, the Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit“)

287861One Responsehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.economonitor.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F01%2Fwilliam-black-in-davos-now-we-know-better%2FWilliam+Black+in+Davos%3A+Now+We+Know+Better2013-01-29+17%3A16%3A55William+K.+Blackhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.economonitor.com%2F%3Fp%3D287861 to “William Black in Davos: Now We Know Better”

Like a refreshing sea breeze Bill, you clear a lot of stale air! Ireland's economy only really emerged from 700 years of stagnation in the mid 90's and within a decade the banks had impoverished us! It is impossible to overstate the damage done and the sense of despair and betrayal so many people feel here.
'Criminogenic' is indeed the nature of the factors cited We saw these destroy Ireland's banks and our economy. Also, the monopolistic nature of private property and of privately owned bank's issuance and allocation of credit money was very obvious here. The collusion between these monopolisms seems to me also a criminogenic factor. I wonder does this croneyism fit in the criminogenic category? And whether people might agree that land value taxation and democratic control of credit issuance and allocation are essential to prevent another land/property credit bubble.

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Aaron Menenberg is Foreign Policy and Energy analyst, and a Future Leader with Foreign Policy Initiative. He also co-hosts Podlitical Risk (@podliticalrisk). He is a graduate student in international relations at The Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Previously he has worked at Praescient Analytics, The Hudson Institute, for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and at the IBM Corporation. The views expressed are his own, and you can follow him on Twitter @AaronMenenberg. He welcomes questions and comments at menenbergaaron@gmail.com.

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